Heavenasia is a Shakespearean and dynamite Workforce saleswoman.
“Five or ten years from now, if I’m still living and I have no fight left in me, I’ll remember that I was and am deeply loved.”
“I’m all over the place,” Heavenasia, 16, confessed when I asked how she was feeling over a FaceTime call on Tuesday. “I feel trapped. I feel old. There isn’t anything working for me.” The FaceTime connection is fuzzy enough that it takes me a moment to realize she was crying. Rare.
Heavenasia has Hidradenitis Suppurativa. A genetic disorder that her father also has. “How can he just leave me with this?” she wept. “This is all I get from my father? A disease that I could rot away from?” She sits quietly with her hard truth.
Between domestic violence, illness, and bullying about her weight, Heavenasia’s young life was and is rife with suffering. She has been isolated during this Covid-19 crisis as if her life depends upon it —because it does. While her mother drives double shifts for the Metro, Heavenasia stays in a 3-room apartment on the sixth floor with her siblings.
Then, over the same FaceTime call, I witness her everyday rising. “I’m not normal for a reason,” she stated. “I don’t know the reason, but I will find out.”
Her face shifts from pained to poised. It’s then that I remember a line from her monologue draft for her part in this year’s Ordinary Resurrections: “Peace Of The City is my cure and I stand proudly on that. They accept kids at their worst and these beautiful people have planted seeds in us and watch us grow into beautiful things— things we never believed we could do. Five or ten years from now, if I’m still living and I have no fight left in me, I’ll remember that I was and am deeply loved.”*
#livetofightanotherday #communityoflove #painandpoise
Real Names. Real Stories. Real Courage.
In her preeminent role as Hippolyta, Heavenasia is her own leading lady.
“If there were a Peace Of The City in every neighborhood, I would be out of a job.”
– Dr. Rebecca Schaeffer, Child Psychiatrist, ECMC